In August 2010, Black Rebel Motorcycle
Club (BRMC) suffered a loss that left the band’s future in question.
Singer/bassist Robert Levon Been’s father, Michael Been, died of a heart
attack while the band was in Belgium for a show at the Pukkelpop
festival.

Michael, former bassist and singer of the
acclaimed ’80s/’90s band The Call, officially served as BRMC’s live
sound engineer. But in truth, he played a much bigger role for his son’s
band, serving as mentor and an important musical sounding board for the
group.

BRMC has persevered and is back with a new album, Specter at the Feast,
released this spring. Considering the backdrop of the album (and the
fact that it is dedicated to Michael), it’s easy to understand why some
might get the wrong idea about it.

“I wonder if people have gotten the wrong
impression because it’s not like we started over for the purpose of
(writing) about this specific thing, but just to give ourselves a chance
at a new day,” Robert says.

“This record isn’t really a direct
reflection on his passing,” he continues. “It was moreso, ‘How are we
going to pick ourselves up today and move forward?’ ”

Indeed, it was a struggle for the band to find its footing and make Specter at the Feast.
But this isn’t the first time Robert and the group’s other founding
member, guitarist/singer Peter Hayes, have had to overcome major
adversity since they formed BRMC in 1998.

After the band’s second album, 2003’s Take Them On, On Your Own,
drummer Nick Jago quit the band. After considering breaking up, Robert
and Hayes decided to carry on, stepping away from their usual fully
plugged-in, dense Rock sound to make a bluesy, mostly acoustic album, Howl, as a duo.

As it turned out, shortly before Howl
was finished, Robert and Hayes reconnected with Jago and the drummer
rejoined BRMC.

For a time, the band rediscovered its mojo. But during
touring behind its next album, 2007’s Baby 81, Jago left the band, this time for good.

Robert and Hayes already had a
replacement in mind, having seen Leah Shapiro when her former band, Dead
Combo, opened for BRMC on the Baby 81 tour.But
whether the revamped band would gel musically or personally was a big,
unsettling question. As it turned out, Shapiro clicked and BRMC came
back strong on 2010’s Beat the Devil’s Tattoo, a rocking album that gave the group a new lease on life and suggested it might be better than ever.

“We kind of got a second chance when Leah
joined the band. It felt like the heart kind of came back into it,”
Robert says. “Nick was always extremely talented and capable and that
was why we struggled through so many records together.”

But then came Michael’s sudden and shocking passing.

Burned out from what had already been a long tour behind Beat the Devil’s Tattoo
at that point, BRMC took a break and tried to find its bearings. Once
the group started to turn its attention to trying to create new music,
things didn’t come easily.

The group started work at the studio
owned by Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters. Robert and Hayes had collaborated
with Grohl on a song called “Heaven and All” for Grohl’s movie, Sound City.
After that, Grohl offered BRMC use of his studio. But at that point,
the idea was just to capture some music in a formative state.

“What we did at Dave’s is we laid down
basics. We did basic drum takes and bass,” Robert says. “We had a lot of
songs that had no words to them. Most of the album was just primal
feelings and impulses, and we couldn’t connect with what we wanted to
say.”

Wanting to get away from the distractions
of Los Angeles, the group moved to a friend’s cabin in a remote area
near Santa Cruz, Calif., successfully turning the rough ideas into fully
arranged songs with lyrics in what Robert calls a “really peaceful”
setting.

The music that emerged on Specter at the Feast showcases two sides to the band’s music that have always existed, but with some fresh accents.

On the one hand, there are dense,
driving, guitar-heavy rockers “Hate the Taste,” “Rival” and “Teenage
Disease” that give the album an edge. Then there are spacious and
atmospheric songs like “Fire Walker,” Lullaby” and “Some Kind of Ghost.”
Together, they showcase the two contrasting sides of BRMC’s
personality.

“The only way I know how to explain that
would be it feels like everything is stretched apart,” Robert says of
the new songs. “Everything’s just pulled apart as far as it can go to
the left and as far as it can go to the right. Elements in ‘Sell It,’
elements in ‘Rival,’ elements in ‘Teenage Disease’ are some of the
(sharpest, angriest shades) of darkness I’ve ever heard from us, like
real darkness. Then, on the other side of it are ‘Returning,’ ‘Lullaby’
and ‘Lose Yourself’ and ‘Sometimes the Light.’ It just feels like it’s
all the same places we went before, just further on both sides.”